Review - Hostel

Unfamiliar East European towns. Is there anything more creepy?

Discussing Oral sex with your grandparents? Yeah, maybe. But as far as a film setting goes, the outskirts of Bratislava is definitely up there - and is the location of the new film Hostel.

Before I get underway with a descriptive review, let me set the scene of how I went about viewing this nasty piece of celluloid.

I awoke 6:15pm Sunday afternoon after a monster weekend. Wandering downstairs I found my flat-mate Sam flaked out on the couch and asked if he wanted to go watch a film that some critics were describing as "Torture Porn". Of course, he agreed.

We caught the Bus to the cinema, whereby a mildly insane pregnant woman stood at the front and lectured everyone on Christianity for the entire journey.

After the sermon fuelled Bus ride we entered the cinema, hungover, scattered, with heads full of religous babble. We could not have been better prepared for the oncoming visual onslught if we tried.

Hostel is the tale of three young men doing as they should in their early twenties. No, not studying hard or working summer jobs - on a mission of scoring drugs and women throughout Europe. The adventure begins with the boys enjoying a weed-fuelled exploration of Amsterdam's Red Light District. Arriving home after curfew, they are locked out of their Hostel only to be taken in by a young European man named Alex.

Upon chatting with the mysterious Alex, the boys learn of a small town just outside of Bratislava. This is no ordinary destination, as a war has taken most of township's men, leaving a sex starved female Utopia. There is one particular Hostel that guarantees foreign travellers sex, so the three protaganists give up on their current agenda of Barcelona for the Shagger's Wonderland of Slovakia.

One train ride later and to their extreme pleasure the boys find the Hostel to be exactly as described. It's Disneyland, but instead of the 'Tea Cups' it's C-Cups and the Enchanted Castle is a sauna full of exotic women. What follows is a night of dancing, drugs and sex, and the boys are more than plum-pleased with their Bratislava adventure.

It's about at this point that the audience has been lulled into a teen sex comedy haze, as the film feels more Porky's than Pyscho. But what fun is an Air show if the planes don't crash, and it's not too long before our travelogue of sweaty sex fun turns into a bloody power tool nightmare. Turns out the Hostel is actually a front for a far sinister operation, and the boys have fallen into it's trap like the gullible drug fucked horn bags they truly are.


Sure enough, all three of the boys end up Torture creek without a paddle. Though the protagonists aren't the most likeable of heros, the acting is of a decent standard - especially the resulting torture scenes which are some of the tensest moments I've seen while at the cinema for quite some time.

I have seen gorier special effects - especially when it comes to Asian cinema, and some of Hostel's ideas come across tamer than they could have been. That considered, It's still one of the classic kick-in-the-nuts-for-tourism films. Just as Once Were Warriors tarnished our image of New Zealand and City of God kind of put that Brazilian tour on the backburner, Hostel is going to leave Eastern European Back-packing with a sour taste in your mouth. I can see the tourism advertisments on the Underground already:


Any film that starts off with drugs and sex in Amsterdam, and ends up with blow-torches and chainsaws in down town Bratislava was always going to trip my trigger. Half teen Sex Comedy, half Snuff film - this is definitely not a film for all tastes. Those who like gruesome Horror movies will really enjoy Hostel. Those who don't? Well, I hear there's a great Penguin Documentary doing the rounds. Go watch that instead.

Hostel. The perfect Date movie? I doubt it.
The perfect film for a Hungover Sunday? Oh God Yes.